When we drove through the town, I just could not believe the scope of the destruction. The town just looked like a mud field used for dumping waste. The number of buildings left standing in the main section of town could be counted on one hand. And those buildings were 4 or more stories tall. The tsunami had reduced the whole town to sticks, poles, upside down cars and homes, and washed up boats. It almost seemed unbelieavable that a large town had ever stood where we were driving. We saw some police walking among the rubble, and we were told they were probably searching for bodies. It was a grim sight. You can see for yourself from the pictures and video below. We took all the pictures as we drove, because we felt that it would be rude for us as Americans to stop the car, get out, and take photos like tourists.
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Minami Sanriku before the tsunami (picture not mine)    |
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| Notice the upside down house (Picture from Mallory) |
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| Those are fishing nets on the building (Picture from Mallory) |
The refuge shelter that we helped out at was housing 5000 people, the majority of the town's survivors. It was a large gym complex. Outside the buding port-a-potties and makeshift toilets (divided by tarps) were set up - you can imagine the smell in those areas. News trucks, medical trailers, and fire engines were also set up around the building, along with military tents and trucks. 
Inside the complete, each family had a space of about 10 feet by 10 feet that was fenced off by low cardboard. The shelter had a depressing feel to it! The shelter was running on a generator, so it had very limited electricty, heat, and running water.
We arrived around 1:00pm (the drive took twice as long because of all the earthquake-induced traffic) and helped in the gym, which had been turned into a donation warehouse. I was impressed with how organized all the donations where -- and there were literally tons and tons of them. The whole huge gym was filled with donations. The shelter was using some of the donations for its 5,000 refugees, but it was also acting as a loading dock for other shelters and aid organizations to come get goods to take to places where they were needed. We helped to load and unload trucks that afternoon. Sometimes we would just stand around and wait for 30-40 minutes for a truck to show up and then we would all jump on the assembly line to unload it. It was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Because everyone wanted to help unload or load truck (given the Japanese work ethic) there were often more people than needed on the assembly line, so it took longer. It felt like a menial task, becuase we didn't get to see the donations being used or delivered. I kept praying throughout the day for the people who would be recieving these goods and thanking God for them. It helped me to remember that what we were doing was bigger than just tossing boxes down a human assembly line.
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| Kris carrying a 30 Kg bag of rice (that's 66 pounds!) |
We stopped working around 5pm and ate dinner. The evangelism team lives out of campers, so there were sleeping campers (one for guys and one for girls), a camper full of donations and supplies, and a cooking camper. The campers were parked along the driveway of the gym complex.
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| Some of our campers and vans |
The team made us a delicious meal of curry that we ate standing behind the camper. But even a warm meal couldn't warm me up. Since Minamisanriku is in the north and a cold front came in that weekend and we were mainly working in the storage area of the shelter that wasn't heated, I was freezing cold for the whole two days we were there. My upper body wasn't so bad, since I had on a thermal shirt, sweater, fleece, and winter coat, but my legs, toes, face, and ears were cold for two days straight. The constant cold was the hardest part of the trip for me. When we slept was the only time I was warm because, even though there was no heater running, we those warming hot hands. I put 5 on my body and that kept me really warm. I need those warmers since Kris had to sleep in a separate trailer from me (since there was a male trailer and a female trailer) and we couldn't cuddle together for warmth. I did cuddle up to my friend Bethany -- times of crisis call for instant female bonding lol.
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| Bethany and Caitlin in our sleeping space |
The next day we woke up at 6:30 am for breakfast (SO EARLY) and then went back to the warehouse. At first it was hard to be excited about serving, since I was cold and tired and there was a lot of time in between trucks. But after an hour or two, things really began to pick up, which also brought my spirits up because I knew I was being helpful. Trucks were constantly rolling in for donations and pick-ups. It was encouraging to see more trucks being loaded than unloaded, because it meant the government was getting their act together and finding ways to destribute the goods to the areas that need them. Nathan, the leader of the evangalism team, had told us the night before how many shelters were not getting what they needed because the government hadn't yet formalized a process for getting the goods out. That news was sad to us, so it was good to see more people getting what they needed.
After lunch, I got to go to another shelter in the town to entertain children with a few other teachers and two people from the evangalism team who speak Japaense. To get to the shelter, we had to drive through more devestation. We saw one house flipped over, a boat in someone's yard, and one house submerged to the roof in the bay. What was interesting was that you could tell where the tsunami stopped. One house might be completely flattened or washed away, the one behind it maybe was crushed on the lower level and missing windows, and the one behind it was pretty much okay. Can you imagine being in the house that was okay because it was a little higher up on the mountain and watching your neighbors and their homes get washed away? Can you imagine the survivor's guilt? I just can't.
The other shelter was in a building that is being made into a nursing home. It had large windows overlooking the bay, and from the main room you could see the house that had drown in the bay. It also lacked electricty and heat, and the wooden floors were cold as ice, but being there was the highlight of the trip for me. We played with about 20 kids between the ages of three in sixteen. We taught them 4 Corners (a MeySen game), Heads-Up Seven-Up, Red light-yellow light-green light, and Pom Pom Pullaway (another MeySen game). They loved red light, yellow light, green light. We also gave them some snacks and gave snacks to some other families there. We taught the younger kids and the girls the dot game while the older boys made paper airplanes. They loved that -- they tried to fly them farther than each other and hit each other with them. It was good to see the kids laugh, yell, and have fun. Some of the girls showed us how to make origami cranes. I was also praying for these kids throughout our time with them, that God would provide for them and that He would call them into a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.
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| Playing red light, yellow light, green light |
When we got back to the other shelter, Kris told me how we was able to go with some of the evangelism team to drop off donations to other shelters and areas that needed them. As I said, not all of the aid was being destributed well, and Mike and the other members of the evangelism team were able to identify places that really needed help and take donations (made through MeySen and Samaritan's Purse) to these places. Kris went with the team to Baba Nakayama, a town made up of mostly fishers and farmers. They went to a "shelter" that was actually a home that 100 people are living in and 200 people are eating at! They had no electricty, running water, or gasoline. They hadn't recieved any aid for two weeks (right after the tsunami). They were eating food they found floating in the water or that they had salvaged from abandoned homes or brought from their own homes. The road leading up to the shelter had been whiped out, so the military had given them a plow and some gasoline so that the refugees could plow the road themselves (that's right, the refugees were left to do it themselves!). By the time they had plowed the road and heated enough water for the women to bathe, they were out of gas: They couldn't go anywhere to get supplies or things that they needed. Nathan tried to get someone to go to the shelter to give them supplies, but the people running the gym shelter basically said, "If they want it enough, they will find a way to get it." So Nathan and the team took supplies to them. The refugees whatever they could -- food, hygene kits from Samaritan's Purse, water, clothes, and clean underwear (which was in high demand). The team also brought them gas, so they could go get supplies next time they needed them and so they could heat water and cook. If MeySen's team hadn't gone to that shelter, who knows how long they would have been waiting for help! And if Mike hadn't been GPS tagging the area, the team would have never known there was such great need!
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| The town of Baba Nakayama - completely whiped out (Picture by Mike) |
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| Kris helps unload the supplies (Picture by Mike) |
Serving alongside the Japanese people was also an interesting inter-cultural experience. The language barrier kept us from really communicating, but even with that, I experienced first hand there work ethic. They all wanted to help when a truck came in. And when trucks were not coming in, NO ONE sat around. They stood and waited, but they didn't sit down (less they look like slackers). That was very interesting. A few came up to us to use the English they knew. Some knew only a few sentences or phrases, and some were able to have short conversations with us. I really wish that I knew Japanese so I could have spoken with them more.
One member of our team, who has been living here for years and knows Japanese, over heard one man ask another "What are we going to do with all these foreigners?!" To which she responded, "We're just here to help!" They were quite surprised she understood them and I think embarrassed too.
I do have a funny story from serving. I was literally laughed at on more than one occassion for being a little girl carring big things. First, I was helping to load a truck and happened to be the only girl. Each guy in line took two boxes to carry to the trucky. When it was my turn, they handed me one box. I stood there, waiting for the second box and they just looked at me. All the men in line started laughing because I wanted to carry a second box. One of them pointed in the direction of the truck and told me to go. It was funny. The second time we were also loading a truck and I was carrying two boxes. One of the men saw me carrying two boxes and he said "Ooooh!" and laughed. I really must look like a little girl!
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